22 de Octubre 2006

New US Elections 2006 Layer, Larry Page visit

Last night, Google released some new layer changes for Google Earth. The "Register to Vote" layer added a short while ago has been changed to the "2006 US Election Guide" and includes two sub-layers: "US Election Guide" (click on the placemarks for useful voting information), and "US Congressional Districts" (which shows the borders of those districts). These layers are NOT turned on by default, but the information is more useful.

It appears there have been some improvements to reduce the amount of clutter when viewing the large number of placemarks if you turn on the Google Earth Community layers. [EDIT 30-Oct: Apparently some of the changes to the layer won't be visible until the next release of GE 4]. Google let me know these changes went live last night while I was visiting their booth today at the X PRIZE Cup.

By the way, Larry Page - one of the co-founders of Google - dropped by to visit the booth (and his employees). Larry was here to attend the X PRIZE Cup and attend a board meeting of the X PRIZE Foundation. I was fortunate enough to be invited to have dinner with Larry and some of the Google Earth team this evening.

I plan to summarize a few other highlights about my trip next week in a trip report, and I plan to share some of the photos I took. Sunday I will be spending all day trying to make it back to North Carolina from New Mexico in a small plane. Wish me luck for a strong tailwind!

Todas las imágenes de Google Earth capturadas de pantalla son Copyright de Google

Comentarios

An excellent effort, and useful. Great job, guys.

I should point out, though, that your dataset is a little old. In southern Texas, the districts were redrawn by court order recently. You still have the old, unconstitutional districts, which could confuse some voters.

Enviado por: Alex at 24 de Octubre 2006 a las 07:42 PM

Why is the Libertarian Party not being covered? There is more to the US political landscape than just "red state/blue state". The Libertarian Party is the 3rd-largest party in the country, why wouldn't it be represented on the map?

Enviado por: SC-LP at 25 de Octubre 2006 a las 09:45 AM

The Libertarian Party seems to be there (as are other third parties) - Libertarian Candidates have an (L) next to their name.